Character Archetype – The design of the main character for this storytelling adventure game is based on a well-known story book – The Little Prince, which was first published in 1943 by a French writer and pilot, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. (The Child of Night “story background“)
front view side view back view
running
The game designer Chris Crawford, as well as a passionate advocator of game design to be as an art form, he used the term “People games” to describe his dream of future computer games would be a viable medium of artistic expression where the goals are of a social nature and focus on interactions with well-defined characters:
“I dreamed of computer games expressing the full breadth of human experience and emotion. I dreamed of computer games that were tragedies, games about duty and honour, self-sacrifice and patriotism. I dreamed of satirical games and political games; games about the passionate love between a boy and girl, and the serene and mature love of a husband and wife of decades; games about a boy becoming a man, and a man realizing that he is no longer young. I dreamed of games about a man facing truth on a dusty main street at high noon, and a boy and his dog, and a prostitute with a heart of gold. (Chris Crawford on Game Design 2003)”
In this thesis, The Child of Night is dedicated to tell such a story in “People games”. It is a story about growth, about love and fight with your inner fear. When the little boy found that he might lose his flower forever, he cried with sorrow, breaking into tears, after all, he was just a boy. You don’t want this happen, so you join the adventure in dark night, playing the role as a boy himself, fighting for love and hope, being brave.
If you help the boy get a star, you will see he his face turn to full of smile, with naïve and pure happiness, that’s the joy of the boy but also it is yours, for you feel like you are the character in this adventure story, you give your thought on it, you pour your love to the little boy, the child of night.
(My note on Child of Night, Aug 2015)
Why interactive storytelling? (not to deny the traditional storytelling, but try to explore a new way for better storytelling)
Traditional storytelling is good that we all had very nice experience with it.
But if stories themselves are universal, the way we tell them changes with the technology at hand. New medium has given rise to a new form of narrative.
From books, radio(audio story book) to movie(silent movie, black-and-white movie to colour-sound movie, 3D movies in an IMAX Movie theater… ), TV, internet, online broadcast, mobile devices and etc. , the way how we tell story has been changes with all these rich forms of different media during the past centuries.
The idea that traditional storytelling mostly incorporates responses from its audience, combining interactivity with storytelling is far from new. Indeed, interactive storytelling, which involves not only advances in interactive technologies, but also new modes of media content production has been a long-term endeavor to build more immersive environments for the audience. (Cavazza, Lugrin, Pizzi, & Charles, 2007).
(note on interactive storytelling, Sep 2015)
During the journey, he would meet different creatures on his adventure, and thus there are four main basic stories: (Before you read the following stories, here is the “Story Background“)
1. FlyingWhale
2. Meeting the fox
3. Mr. Giant in valley
4. Jungle Elephant
Fig-1 Story one: Flying Wale
Story 1- Flying Whale
Flying whale: I am on the way to my home, but unfortunately I can’t find the whale stars that shows the direction to home.
Story 2 – Meeting the fox
Fox:” Let’s be friend, I will give you my beloved star.” When the fox first meets the little boy, he’s shy and timid.
(The little boy found someone was hiding beside the tree. Look, there was a wagging tail. )
Story 3 – Meeting Mr. Giant in valley
Mr. Giant: I am carrying the light to the lighthouse on seashore.
The Little Boy in The Valley
Story 4- The Jungle Elephant
Jungle elephant: My own jungle is my own jungle, you shall not pass.
Rewards and goals: Getting 4 full starts:
When gathering 4 stars and the boy finally found his beloved flower, he gathered all the stars together to save the flower, below is the bright light magically bringing life back to the flower, the child finally save his beloved flower.
————————————–Installation Design————————————– The installation design should considers of easily transported with proper size and lightweight, so it can be played at most situations.
Installation Design Sketch
Installation Design
The Children are playing the “The Child of Night” tangible game
How it works:
1. A camera is mounted inside the box to track fiducial markers placed on top of box, the received data(e.g. id, position, rotation … ) will be sent to Flash (one of the TUIO client applications for reacTIVision).
2. By interacting with provided objects(See Table 1), multi-sense feedbacks like visual animations, texts and sounds will be showed and heard, as well as the tactile feedback from grabbing physical objects. By doing this, players can use their imagination to make a good storytelling.
The table below shows most of the elements in storytelling:
3. The interactive system creates an intuitive way of placing “objects” spatially for players to explore and it also gives hints when the players need “help” .
e.g. in story “Flying whale”:
Help the whale to find out the whale star: The whale star is high above to the south west, just as its name, it looks like a whale: Try to interact with object to detect the proper start by moving the object to “south west” positions in oder to get the whale star to navigate the whale back home)
(if the whale star is covered by cloud, try to move them. How? think about wind, the wind can blow away could)
——————–Physical Objects———————-
The physical part in the storytelling – “physical objects”, will be made by using FabLab tools.
3D Printing Characters
Painting colouring on the characters
Implementation tools:
Programming platform: Adobe Flash(Air), ReacTIVsion. Animation and drawing: PhotoShop
Fab Lab tools: Laser cutter, 3D printer.
Installation materials: Wide angel camera, LED Strip,(for illumination), transparent matte paper(avoid direct reflection from LED), transparent plastic paper(interactive surface), battery supply box.